Informal talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers may have resumed, but that doesn’t mean the Writers Guild of America has dialed back its efforts to reach interim agreements with independent production companies.
The WGA’s been busy, in fact — and has new interim deals with Lionsgate, Marvel, and RKO to prove it.
The AMPTP, as you might have guessed, was quick to dismiss the agreements, issuing the following statement:
“These one-off agreements are meaningless because the companies signing them know they will not have to abide by their terms for very long, since they’ll be superseded by whatever final industry-wide accords are reached. If companies truly had to live by the terms of these one-off agreements, we are confident none would ever be signed.”
Cattiness aside, the deals do have a number of immediate effects, particularly for Lionsgate, which has projects in development for film and television. On the TV side, the agreement enables Lionsgate to get started on new seasons of Weeds and Mad Men. According to Variety, as the strike wears on, “Lionsgate could wind up as the only major player that is able to proceed on script revisions and pilot production.”
Marvel, meanwhile, plans to use the deal to reopen development on a number of future projects; according to chairman David Maisel, the studio’s docket includes Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man, and The Avengers.
